Our First Fears

In Episode 4 of Our First Fears, No. 1 New York Times Bestselling author Libba Bray takes my hand to ring the doorbell of the Bramford Apartments in New York City, where Rosemary Woodhouse lives with her husband Guy and, possibly, a cabal of evil cultists, in Roman Polanski’s 1968 film, Rosemary’s Baby.  Our chat ranges from recent US supreme court decisions, to the cultural impact this film had o...

In Episode 3 of Our First Fears, animator and author Rob Renzetti digs with me through the very old graves of Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein , both from Universal Pictures in 1931.  We revisit our introductions to these classic characters when we were kids. We examine how both films have been reinvented and their horrors possibly defanged over the past 90 years by their omni...

Episode 2 of Our First Fears is a conversation with prolific novelist and anthologist Ellen Oh, who is also one of the co-founders of We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) , a non-profit dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusivity in children’s literature.    Ellen’s first fears were introduced by her parents, who took her to horror movies at a VERY young age and then told creepy legends about spirits...

For the first outing of Our First Fears , I’m talking with author Anica Mrose Rissi about one of the pillars of horror fiction for kids: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. This collection of American folk-tales has been so impactful since its first publication in 1981—so creepy for the generations who continue to discover it—that Anica and I eac...